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Idiot! Book Review

Reviewed by on Dec 27, 2006
Rating: 5 Star Rating

When a 16-year old comes up with a fake identity on the Internet in order to email his secret crush, the result is chaotic and embarassing. Read a review of Idiot! by Colin Neenan.

Title: Idiot!br/> Author: Colin Neenan
Ages: 12+
Rating: 5


When 16-year old Jim O'Reilly falls in love with his childhood best friend, he becomes an overnight celebrity in Idiot!, a novel by Colin Neenan. Find out if this book is worth a read or if it's purely idiotic.


More Than Just Friends

After Jim O'Reilly tries out for a part in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he falls in love with Zanny - his childhood best friend. The problem is he doesn't know how to tell Zanny he loves her because she seems to be crazy about Jim's bad-boy, emo twin brother, Jake. So, instead of just telling Zanny he's fallen for her, Jim sets up a fake identity on the internet and starts emailing her. Between memorizing lines of Shakespeare and stalking his secret crush, Jim is also dealing with his parents' messy breakup and some very strange behavior from his English teacher.


Love Is Idiotic

While Jim is torturing himself with his unprofessed love for Zanny, things take a very bad turn for the worse. How bad? Really, really bad. Jim finds out his Dad is having an affair with his English teacher and Zanny finds out that Jim has been the "secret admirer" who has been emailing her love messages. Even worse, Zanny announces she's going to publish Jim's emails in a book she's always wanted to write about love. When Jim tries to stop her, he ends up becoming a national celebrity with his picture on the front page of newspapers across the country.


The Bottom Line

If you've ever done something really stupid, like set up a fake internet identity to stalk your secret crush or memorized someone's timetable just so you can "accidently" run into them in the hallways at school, then you'll relate to Idiot! The book is a real page-turner that's filled with more bizarre twists and love triangles than a season of The O.C. Idiot! is a funny, well-written read about what it's like to fall in love and why love can sometimes be more complicated than Shakespeare's iambic pentameter.


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